Tuesday, September 30, 2008

An informed voter is not only a wise voter, he or she is probably also a good American. In this regard, the press has always been the cornerstone in the foundation of American democracy … that is, until the press became such an advocate of socialism and liberal politics that it can no longer be relied upon to convey “fair and balanced” information.

For this reason, geeeeeZ! joins with several others in a Nobama08 blog burst each Tuesday of the week until Election Day. If we cannot obtain the truth about our politicians from an unencumbered press, then we’ll form a cooperative to distribute information independently.

Stanley Kurtz is a journalist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Kurtz’ article in the Wall Street Journal explains why Barack Obama is untrustworthy for the office of the President of the United States. He lacks integrity … and if it is one thing we do not need in the White House, it is yet another dishonest politician.

Mr. Kurtz writes: [BEGIN QUOTE]

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity, and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.

The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.

The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.

Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

[END QUOTE]

To say Mr. Obama is not ready for the presidency is a gross understatement. It is not simply that he lacks experience … it is also that he repudiates traditional American values and culture by embracing Marxist ideology, has been an acolyte of black racist theology, cuddled up with the anarchist activism of Saul Alinski, and even worse … the man is simply and irrevocably dishonest. There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think he honors American tradition, or shares with us our time-honored values. Significantly, a man who works to undermine our education system through socialist engineering is a man who seeks to destroy America.

If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States, and when he has finished his work, none of us will recognize what he has left behind: The People’s Socialist Republic of the United States.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Thanks, Debonair Dude........WOW, are WE in interesting times. WAAAAY too interesting for ME, I might add.

(I just read this and realized it looks like I'm thanking Debonair Dude for the failure of the bail out..I'm not!! Sorry, Dude!)

UPDATE; Please check out this article. It explains everything pretty succinctly and very well linked, etc. It's worth sending around, particularly to undecided voters and others who actually believe Pelosi and the rest of those who won't admit the Democrats are responsible for most of the seeds of the economic crisis.

AFTER you see the EXCELLENT video below...PLEASE go to Mustang's Blog, SOCIAL SENSE, and watch an even MORE damning video. You simply will not believe your eyes and ears and we have to expose more and more people to the truth, painful as our left might find it.

Hats off to Mustang and LASunsett, from whom Mustang got his video......thanks, guys.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

PLEASE send this to all your email acquaintances, Liberal or Conservative. This is not about politics, really, it's about decency, and honor, and respect for the dead and their surviving family members.

Remember the debate/bracelet situation? The Sergeant's mother has asked Obama NOT to wear the bracelet but he persists. THIS is the kind of thing his supporters are ignoring and our media's keeping silent to protect their man. And, the mother is a supporter of his! She apparently just didn't want the boy exploited in any way.

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" Matthew 6:26-27

Easier said than done, I know.............Spend a whole Sunday without worrying. I'll try,too! Have a wonderful day.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Something I often hear from bloggers (including myself) is "We're just PREACHING TO THE CHOIR! We're not making a difference like we'd like to, we're not influencing...we're just typing into a big echo chamber......who cares?"

And then I got an email tonight from a very dear friend and I wanted to share this part of it with you:

"Thanks for helping bind us all together, Z; I wouldn't want to go through this alone. Love you for your heart and passions!"

WE ALL, ALL OF US BLOGGERS, have heart and we have passions, and I felt this wonderful comment was really for ALL OF YOU. And I salute you like my dear friend Ron salutes me.

Here is a friend who reads my blog, never comments, doesn't have his own blog, but he reads it and it helps him to feel less alone in what's happening to America these days, he feels blogs are "helping bind us all together." You ALL have some readers like Ron!

Bloggers, we ARE doing something!...we are NOT just singing to the choir. Chins up, fellow bloggers.....you all deserve that sentiment at least as much as I do, you know that.

Smart, passionate, and dedicated. And people read our stuff, people we don't know are there, and they feel bonded, they feel less alone in the process.

I don't usually enlarge the DATE of an article, but you'll see why I have after you've read this. When you hear pundits and politicians talk about how the “free market” system has failed us, please keep this article in mind. Ya, the ECONOMY is that VASE, Clinton is the KITTY. (no offense to kitties)

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage LendingBy STEVEN A. HOLMES

Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.'' (Z: Ya, THAT Franklin Raines who Obama now denies is his economic advisor regardless of the facts)

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University 's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent. In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Z: Just curious. Is everybody SUPPOSED to have a home? I waited till I could really afford a home and finally bought one.......can there BE a homeowner utopia that works other than in N Korea? And think of all the poor people who were sold a bill of goods about the American Dream. The American Dream is there, but you have to work hard and merit it, or rent your home and, SOMEHOW (is that so bad?) have a full and happy life. Right?

Friday, September 26, 2008

I thought McCain didn't shine tonight and, somehow, Obama came off like he knew what he was talking about. (which, in itself, is no easy feat, let's face it!)

DO NOT GET ME WRONG: I am in no way, shape or form implying I thought Obama's points made SENSE, I'm just saying I think undecideds who aren't clear or informed on the topics and who are as naive as Obama sounded to us tonight might veer in his direction after tonight's debate. He was prepared, even if his tie WAS crooked.

Just a bit disappointed tonight and, though I put little stock in polls, I must admit I'll be eager to see them this weekend. My buddy, Rich, has a different take on it at Mullings.com. Check that out. I hope he's right!

*** THE PHOTOGRAPH ABOVE: This is a picture of the 1,215 soldiers who reenlisted this July 4, 2008 in a palace in Baghdad. The media barely covered it, as you know. Just to illustrate McCain's point that about 600 had reenlisted last year when he was in Iraq and spoke to them that day. They WANT us to win.

The following was released today by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA):"One of the most blatant lies ever to come from a politician's mouth," is how the ISRA is characterizing a recent statement by U.S. Senator Barack Obama.

Speaking in the latest issue of "Field & Stream," Obama claims that Illinois sportsmen know him as an advocate for their rights. On the contrary, Obama's voting record while a state senator clearly indicates that he has nothing but contempt for the law-abiding firearm owner.

"Any sportsman who counts Barack Obama as one of his friends is seriously confused," said ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson.

"Throughout his tenure in the Illinois Senate, Obama served as one of the most loyal foot soldiers in Mayor Daley's campaign to abolish civilian firearm ownership. While a state senator, Obama voted for legislation that would ban and forcibly confiscate nearly every shotgun, target rifle and hunting rifle in the state.

Obama also voted for bills that would ration the number of firearms a law-abiding citizen could own, yet give a pass to the violent thugs who roam our streets. And, inexplicably, Obama voted four times against legislation that would allow citizens to use firearms to defend their homes and families."

"Let us also not forget that Obama served as a director of the Joyce Foundation," continued Pearson. "While on the Joyce Foundation board, Obama funneled tens of millions of dollars to radical gun control organizations such as the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence and the Violence Policy Center."

"If Senator Obama considers his legislative record and his philanthropic endeavors to be acts of advocacy on behalf of sportsmen's rights, then I submit that the Senator is seriously confused as well," asserted Pearson. "Nobody knows Obama's record on guns better than I do, and it's rotten to the core," said Pearson. "I've been involved in Illinois politics nearly as long as Obama has been alive. In that time, I have never encountered a legislator who was more hostile towards or more disinterested in sportsmen's rights than Barack Obama."

Z: He's sure good at telling one audience what they want to hear and doing quite the opposite of what he'd said, huh? Imagine tonight's debate?

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Let me say at the outset, that we are in a financial pickle and we have to do this Wall Street bail out deal - like it or not, which I most assuredly do not. Having established that … here's the column:Nothing … nothing focuses the mind of a Member of the U.S. House or Senate like a looming adjournment date. The 110th Congress wants to get the you-know-what out of town by not later than Saturday, so they will happily spend TRILLIONS of your dollars to pay their own way home.To review the bidding (for those who slept through 11th grade Social Studies when Mr. Marandi talked about Article I, Sections 2 & 3 of the U.S. Constitution) all 435 Members of the House who are (A) still alive, (B) not in jail, and (C) want to come back, are up for re-election as are one-third of the United States Senate who meet the same tests.The election this year will be on November 4 which means we are within six weeks of the big day and the Members want to go home and remind their constituents why they should ignore the entreaties and lies of their challengers and send the incumbents back to their safe havens in the House and Senate office buildings.Thus, the race to authorize the spending of $700 BILLION (which is on top of the $137 KAJILLION already spent on bailing out the crooks who were running those other big investment houses as well as Fannie and Freddie.)This is why I could never be a Congressman or a Senator: I would insist that someone on my staff go through the list of homeowners in THE HAMPTONS out on Long Island.Anyone who (A) owns property in THE HAMPTONS and (B) works for one of the companies which is going to get rescued by the money you will have withheld from today's paycheck would have to sign the deed to their property in THE HAMPTONS over to the U.S. Government so that you and I could bid on a weekend next summer.That is not going to happen, of course because we are being sold on the fact that only highly-skilled, highly-trained experts can run these investment operations, so we have to allow them their multi-million dollar salaries and/or bonuses.As far as I'm concerned Moe, Larry and Curly couldn't have done any worse than these Wall Street jerks with their slicked back hair, tailor-made shirts and suits, custom-fit shoes, gold cufflinks, and Hermes ties.And that's just the women.Where was I?So, when McCain announced he was suspending his campaign and might not participate in the debate tonight, my cell phone went off like the signal that the meat loaf was ready on the buffet at the all-you-can-eat early bird restaurant in Pompano Beach, Florida.I really believe this to be true: There are two Senators who, when they walk into a room to discuss an important issue, their colleagues will stop talking and listen. They might not agree, but they will listen.Those two Senators are Ted Kennedy (who, because of his illness will not be involved in this) and John McCain.The Democrats - who control the House and the Senate - raced to come to some semblance of a deal within hours of McCain saying he was coming back to help structure it - proves my point. Sen. Obama needed his guys to rally toward a deal BEFORE McCain's staff could show up singing the Mighty Mouse Song: "Here I come to save the day…!"So, McCain DID have an effect on the process, if only to speed it up so he couldn't take credit. As this is being written, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is on Capitol Hill with the geniuses who work there to try to save our bacon. Paulson came from Wall Street. He was chairman of Goldman Sachs which just hit up Warren Buffet for a $5 BILLION infusion or transfusion or whatever.Paulson's official Department of the Treasury bio says he was "Staff Assistant to the President from 1972 to 1973." However, our friends at Wikipedia.com point out that he was "assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973."I'm not making any comparisons between Paulson and Ehrlichman. I'm just saying …This whole thing might fall apart and we could descend into a 1930's-level depression. My mom, who lived through it, has often said "I don't know why they call it the Great Depression. I never thought here was anything 'Great' about it."Wise words from my mom.

Sign up for Mullings.com by Rich Galen. It's 3 times a week, cheap (or free if you choose not to pay but you'll choose to pay) and all the political pundits read it. You won't be sorry; Rich is a great guy and knows from which he speaks.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, an American-born Muslim whom I trust. (yes, me....I know, I didn't want to)

Mr and Mrs Z heard Dr. Jasser speak Monday night at a Republican Women's group dinner. I held the same view that many of you hold, that all Muslims must be mistrusted if for nothing else but to err on the side of safety. I hated feeling that way, my heart told me that not all Muslims could possibly want all non Muslims, we infidels, dead, but my brain has ingested the work of excellent writers and thinkers whom I respect and who feel quite differently, and I must admit I had been persuaded. Then I heard Dr. Jasser speak.

He started to talk and I felt tense and defensive and expected I'd leave this evening's lecture still angry and fearful, not trusting anything he had said. I listened carefully while he mentioned how Ronald Reagan, whom I came to realize he greatly admired, had called "the evil empire an evil empire" and how we should call today's Islamist enemies the same thing and not shirk from calling them 'jihadists', 'terrorists', 'radial islamists' because we won't be able to fight an enemy we're afraid to correctly identify; I heard him say that even family he'd never met back in Syria had been threatened by Islamists for the work he's doing here in America. I heard him talk with pride about how the navy had made it possible for him to earn his medical degree and how he rips pages out of stories for his children because the only publishers of children's books with well known Arabic stories in this country are Wahabists and he in no way supports the philosophies they purposefully intermingle into the well known children's tales. He spoke about how badly Islam needs reform and how the "battle within Isalm is a battle between centuries."

He insisted that we ask any Muslims who say they're against radical Islamic groups to name the groups they don't agree with; he said that if a Muslim says he's on board for fighting radicals, ask him if he supports rights for women "if he isn't, he's absolutely not on board", he warned.

He reminded us that Islamism is not his Islam of morality, values and ethics, the things he is teaching his children as good Americans who want to quietly and faithfully practice the religion of their ancestors. He cherishes the American constitution and our legal system and warns that our children must be better educated to understand and appreciate those things if we expect to survive as the America we know and love.

Dr. Jasser says we must stay in Iraq and Afghanistan and we must do that so we can fill the void that radicals will fill if we leave. He reminds us that Islam is still in the 15th century and needs to be helped to divide faith from government. The void now is filled by Imams promoting theocracy instead of issues like free speech and equality.

I have since come to find that Steve Emerson, the well known expert in terrorism most of you have read and appreciate, trusts Dr. Jasser and Emerson is so careful and so informed about the very real threats that this made a big impression on me.

With not a little hubris, I thought I'd tell you here all about Dr. Jasser's views and I took copious notes, writing furiously so I'd miss nothing important to share with you. But, while researching on the internet to confirm the abbreviations I'd so quickly written down, I ran across an article written by Dr. Jasser and I realized his own words would be far more effective and clear and compelling than anything I could write about him! I strongly encourage you to read this article, I beg you to read it, and I know you will not be sorry. I think you will be impressed and, maybe, even a little relieved? "If there ARE 'good Muslims' or 'nominal Muslims', where ARE they? Until they speak out, I don't believe there IS one!" You've all heard these things, I've said them myself and I believed them. But, these people do exist and Dr. Jasser is a leader in the cause and I urge you to look more into him and his group, The American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Here is another really excellent piece he wrote where he tells us, with emotion, how desperate he has felt as a Muslim America when he's seen the terrible things Islamists have brought on our great country.

I thought the following paragraph was important enough to quote here: "Through these founding principles of constitutional, secular (religious freedom free of theocracy and government coercion, and Islamic hegemony), AIFD would also serve as an example of an American Islamic institution which can be a leading voice for liberty-minded Muslims in America in the war on terror. Through regular commentary AIFD will intellectually stand against the religious fanatics who exploit the religion of Islam for a nihilistic, anti-American anti-Western war. In fact a major component in the war on terror is the intellectual deconstruction of the claim Islamo-fascists have upon the religion of Islam. AIFD was formed as an unmistakable expression of American liberty and freedom in an attempt to take back the faith of Islam from the demagoguery of the Islamo-fascists."

So, now that I've introduced you to Dr. Jasser, I urge you to do yourself a favor and research this man some more. He is an American we can be proud of and respect. As we walked out that night after the lecture, I turned to Mr. Z and said "God help me, but I trust this guy......." Support his cause, I think it's ultimately one of the most important causes in America today.

Excuse me Mr. Obama, I mean Senator Obama, sir. Um . . . know you are busy and important and stuff. I mean running for president is very important and . . . ah . . . I hate to bother you. I will only take a minute ok, sir?

See, I have these missing pieces that are holding me up, and I was wondering sir, if you could take time out of your busy schedule and help me out. You know, no big deal, just some loose ends and things.

Hey, you have a nice place here! The wife sees houses like this on TV all the time and says boy she wishes she had digs like this you know? Is that painting real? Really? Wow. I saw something like that in a museum once!

Oh, sorry sir. I didn't mean to get off the track. So if you could just help me out a minute and give me some details, I will get right out of your way. I want to close this case and maybe take the wife to Coney Island or something. Ever been to Coney Island ? No, I didn't think so. .

Well, listen, anyways, I can't seem to get some information I need to wrap this up. These things seem to either be 'locked' or 'not available'. I'm sure it's just some oversight or glitch or something, so if you could you tell me where these things are . . . I . . I . . . have them written down here somewhere . . . oh wait. Sorry about the smears. It was raining out. I'll just read it to you.

Oh hey . . listen! I know you are busy! Is this too much for you now? I mean tell you what. I will come back tomorrow. Give you some time to get these things together, you know? I mean, I know you are busy, so I will just let myself out. I will be back tomorrow. And the day after.

"Who wants to know these things?" asks Senator Obama.

Columbo answered:

THE PEOPLE

Z has a few more questions....How did you get Raines and Johnson UNlisted on your Economic Advisors list and why are you denying they were on it before this fiasco their 'great' economic input has caused?And isn't it INFANTICIDE when someone signs a law saying babies who survive abortion attempts shouldn't have the right to a doctor's assistance? Why was that information locked up for so long?I'm with Colombo.......I'll wait.(thanks, Matt........We don't know who wrote this but it was unattributed at RENSE and I'm pleased to post it here)z

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

I was driving to lunch with a friend when I noticed a brand spanking new silver pick-up truck in front of me (I guess they still call this kind of truck with a 'bed' open area in the back a pick-up truck?) I was in what we in my neck of the woods call "The People's Republic of Santa Monica".

VETERANS FOR McCAIN, the bumper sticker said on this truck right in front of me. Okay, I thought...you need to turn right soon to get to the restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard, so you might as well turn here and you can sidle up to the right side of that truck before you turn and let this driver know how you feel about his bumper sticker. WHY NOT?

SO, I pulled to his side and hoped that he wouldn't take off and cross the street at the stop sign before I got there and that his window was rolled down. He was still there when I got next to him and the window was down! Two young people in their mid twenties were in the cab of the truck.

"I love your bumper sticker! Good for you for having the courage to have this on your truck in Santa Monica!" The gorgeous young girl in the passenger seat smiled down on me and and said "You BET we're for McCain!!" I said "Well, it's just great that you've got that sticker on your truck and that you're not both over fifty!" (Z: I have a tendency to think the older, wiser people are more on board with the Right candidate, don't you!? Those farther from school indoctrination?) She said "NO problem!! Isn't that COOL that he's got it on the truck? And he's a tattoo'd HUNK, too!" I said "YOU ROCK.....we just have to HOPE Obama doesn't get elected because we won't recognize this great country anymore if he is!" She said "YOU are so right!" and we all laughed and waved and we went our separate ways.

I'm still smiling. In the People's Republic, I might as well have run into a straight Boy Scout helping an old lady cross the street. Oops...around here, they'd probably say "age challenged, not old. My apologies."

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement................You will want to read the rest.

Z: And, after you do, you'll see the total picture on just how hard the Obama campaign has lied and mischaracterized and hidden information that shows only this one part of the puzzle we're not seeing enough pieces of; the real Barry Barack Hussein Obama.For America's sake, I hope we get this information out. Is it so bad in and off itself? Sure. Is a cover-up of the truth worse than the truth? In my opinion, much worse, and much more curious.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Used to be you'd stop at a stop sign and, if there were pedestrians just starting to cross and there was no car behind you, they'd wait till you went through and THEN cross, right?

Used tobe you'd look behind you if you were backing out of a parking space in a parking lot and feel assured that if you didn't see anybody, anybody who might be there was also looking around and would avoid your car so he or she would be safe, right?

Used to be that if someone was crossing in a crosswalk and you had stopped for them, they'd kind of walk a bit faster to let you pass quickly, a nice gesture of thanks for having stopped, right?

Used to be that you'd pull up to a stop sign and the pedestrian desiring to cross and you would make some eye contact and they'd start crossing as soon as they knew you'd seen them, maybe even waving thanks and speeding up to get out of your way, right?

Used to be people who wanted to cross the street would make good and sure you saw them, right? Today, I see people all the time just walking down the street and stepping into the crosswalk without looking left, right, NOTHING!? I'm fairly sure they don't know they're IN a crosswalk! They just feel it's your job to make sure they're safe.

A startling confession again proves their guilt. Now it's time for their left-wing defenders to acknowledge it. By Ronald Radosh* September 17, 2008 Published in the L.A. Times (believe it or not)Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed 55 years ago, on June 19, 1953. But last week, they were back in the headlines when Morton Sobell, the co-defendant in their famous espionage trial, finally admitted that he and his friend, Julius, had both been Soviet agents.

It was a stunning admission; Sobell, now 91 years old, had adamantly maintained his innocence for more than half a century. After his comments were published, even the Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Meeropol, were left with little hope to hang on to -- and this week, in comments unlike any they've made previously, the brothers acknowledged having reached the difficult conclusion that their father was, indeed, a spy. "I don't have any reason to doubt Morty," Michael Meeropol told Sam Roberts of the New York Times.

With these latest events, the end has arrived for the legions of the American left wing that have argued relentlessly for more than half a century that the Rosenbergs were victims, framed by a hostile, fear-mongering U.S. government. Since the couple's trial, the left has portrayed them as martyrs for civil liberties, righteous dissenters whose chief crime was to express their constitutionally protected political beliefs. In the end, the left has argued, the two communists were put to death not for spying but for their unpopular opinions, at a time when the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were seeking to stem opposition to their anti-Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War.

To this day, this received wisdom permeates our educational system. A recent study by historian Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton has found that very few college history textbooks say simply that the Rosenbergs were guilty; according to Schweikart, most either state that the couple were innocent or that the trial was "controversial," or they "excuse what [the Rosenbergs] did by saying, 'It wasn't that bad. What they provided wasn't important.'

"Indeed, Columbia University professor Eric Foner once wrote that the Rosenbergs were prosecuted out of a "determined effort to root out dissent," part of a broader pattern of "shattered careers and suppressed civil liberties." In other words, it was part of the postwar McCarthyite "witch hunt."

But, in fact, Schweikart is right, and Foner is wrong. The Rosenbergs were Soviet spies, and not minor ones either. Not only did they try their best to give the Soviets top atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project, they succeeded in handing over top military data on sonar and on radar that was used by the Russians to shoot down American planes in the Korean and Vietnam wars. That's long been known, and Sobell confirmed it again last week.

To many Americans, Cold War espionage cases like the Rosenberg and Alger Hiss cases that once riveted the country seem irrelevant today, something out of the distant past. But they're not irrelevant. They're a crucial part of the ongoing dispute between right and left in this country. For the left, it has long been an article of faith that these prosecutions showed the essentially repressive nature of the U.S. government. Even as the guilt of the accused has become more and more clear (especially since the fall of the Soviet Union and the release of reams of historical Cold War documents), these "anti anti-communists" of the intellectual left have continued to argue that the prosecutions were overzealous, or that the crimes were minor, or that the punishments were disproportionate.

The left has consistently defended spies such as Hiss, the Rosenbergs and Sobell as victims of contrived frame-ups. Because a demagogue like Sen. Joseph McCarthy cast a wide swath with indiscriminate attacks on genuine liberals as "reds" (and even though McCarthy made some charges that were accurate), the anti anti-communists came to argue that anyone accused by McCarthy or Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover should be assumed to be entirely innocent. People like Hiss (a former State Department official who was accused of spying) cleverly hid their true espionage work by gaining sympathy as just another victim of a smear attack.

But now, with Sobell's confession of guilt, that worldview has been demolished.

In the 1990s, when it was more than clear that the Rosenbergs had been real Soviet spies -- not simply a pair of idealistic left-wingers working innocently for peace with the Russians -- one of the Rosenberg's sons, Michael, expressed the view that the reason his parents stayed firm and did not cooperate with the government was because they wanted to keep the government from creating "a massive spy show trial," thereby earning "the thanks of generations of resisters to government repression.

"Today, he and his brother Robert run a fund giving grants to the children of those they deem "political prisoners," such as convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Ironically, if there was any government that staged show trials for political ends, it was the government for which the Rosenbergs gave up their lives, that of the former Soviet Union.

This week, the Meeropols made it clear to the New York Times that they still believe the information their father passed to the Russians was not terribly significant, that the judge and the prosecutors in their parents' case were guilty of misconduct, and that neither Julius nor Ethel should have been given the death penalty for their crimes.

On the subject of their mother, the Meeropols have a point. In another development last week, a federal court judge in New York released previously sealed grand jury testimony of key witnesses in the case, including that of Ruth Greenglass, Julius' sister-in-law. It turns out that a key part of her testimony for the prosecution -- that Ethel had typed up notes for her husband to hand to the Soviets -- was most likely concocted.

That doesn't mean that Ethel was innocent -- indeed, the preponderance of the evidence suggests she was not. But what is clear is that in seeking to get the defendants to confess to Soviet espionage, the prosecutors overstepped bounds and enhanced testimony to guarantee a conviction. Americans should have no problem acknowledging when such judicial transgressions take place, and in concluding that the execution of Ethel was a miscarriage of justice.

Nevertheless, after Sobell's confession of guilt, all other conspiracy theories about the Rosenberg case should come to an end. A pillar of the left-wing culture of grievance has been finally shattered. The Rosenbergs were actual and dangerous Soviet spies. It is time the ranks of the left acknowledge that the United States had (and has) real enemies and that finding and prosecuting them is not evidence of repression.

*The author, Ronald Radosh, is an emeritus professor of history at City University of New York and an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the coauthor of "The Rosenberg File."

Z: Sometimes, I wonder if "Soviet Spy" even means much to some Americans anymore. I'm waiting to hear "So, what was the big deal?"

Parallels abound between Gov. Sarah Palin’s quest to be a heartbeat from the U.S. presidency and Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in Great Britain.

Thatcher broke the glass ceiling in her country, where no woman had ever risen to such a top leadership position. The arguments against her were plenty: She had no experience in foreign policy, defense or national security matters. Most of her expertise was in domestic issues such as education. The old-boy network was united against her, but she took on the leadership in her own party.

In addition, the intellectual and political establishment disdained Thatcher. They looked down on her lower-middle-class background in a small town and her religiously strict background. She sparked the ire particularly of the academic left who called her “Attila the Hun in a skirt.”

Thatcher, who along with Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, slashed union-written restrictions and regulations to revive Britain’s sagging economy into the strongest in Europe. Winston Churchill II said Thatcher, along with his grandfather, were “the greatest British prime ministers in history.”

Thatcher, also against environmentalist protests, pushed oil drilling offshore in the North Sea in the northern extremity of her country, North Scotland. Scots enthusiastically embraced the drilling and pipe-laying that brought new prosperity to the region.

Similarly, Alaskans applauded their governor, Palin, who now is Republican vice presidential candidate for her support of oil and gas exploration. Other similarities abound between Palin “the Barracuda,” which was her basketball nickname, and Thatcher, known as “the Iron Lady.”Thatcher, like Palin, was not an accommodating or compromising politician. Her most famous phrase was: “This lady’s not for turning.” Her cabinet did not want her to rescue the Falklands from the grip of Argentinean Dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, but she did.

In Alaska, Republican leaders tried to stop Palin from going after corruption in her own party. Her intransigence upset the don’t-rock-the-boat Republicans in control.

In Britain, after a late Cabinet meeting, where most of Thatcher’s ministers had opposed cuts she proposed, she took them out for dinner at a trattoria near Ten Downing Street. The waiter approached her and the 10 men and started to read the specials.

Thatcher stopped him and said, “We’ll have the pasta.” The waiter nodded and said, “What about the veggies?”

“They’ll have pasta, too,” Thatcher replied. (Z: I LOVE THAT!!!)

Thatcher once said, “Some things are right; some things are wrong. Life is ultimately character, and that character comes from what you make of yourself. You must work hard to support yourself, but hard work is even more important in the formation of character.”

Palin has uttered much the same thing about her own life. It is not surprising that both grew up with the same small-town, middle-class, church-attending, hard-working values.

Thatcher was the youngest girl on the field hockey team when she was 11, and eventually became its captain. She later said, “It was not the playing that gave her pleasure, but the competition and winning.”

Similarly, Palin developed her zest for fighting to win in sports.

When Thatcher was elected to a Conservative Parliament in 1959 at age 34, the Conservatives under Harold Macmillan held office. But the old-boy network gave her only minor sub-Cabinet positions. She voted against abortion and voiced opposition to easing laws against gays for sodomy with minors.

Thatcher would win respect for her hard work and her speeches against waste and big spending.

In 1974, Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath lost to Socialist Harold Wilson, mostly because he appeased the unions in a national strike. There was a move to challenge Heath for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Thatcher announced her candidacy for the leadership position. She was not given a chance; her rivals had served in posts such as foreign secretary, defense minister and chancellor of the exchequer in previous Conservative governments. They also were part of the upper-class establishment that had ruled the Conservative Party.

Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter, could boast of no posh prep school background, but her principal opponents, Willie Whitelaw, Sir Geoffrey Howe and James Prior did. One Conservative member of Parliament said they “wondered whether a woman could represent the country internationally dealing with defense and foreign policy matters thought to be provinces of men.”

Although her only Cabinet position had been a minor one in education under Heath, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the foreign secretary under Heath, had said at the time that “she’s smarter and tougher than all the rest of the Cabinet combined.”

Conservative leaders did not know how to deal with Thatcher. As her biographer, Chris Ogden of Time magazine, observed, her rivals’ experience with women was limited to aristocratic wives and demure and acquiescent females.

But Thatcher would tell election groups in England, as Palin would later in Alaska, “In politics, if you want something said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.”

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher struck a resonant chord with Conservative Party constituencies and won the party leadership. Still, the party establishment was uneasy with her unapologetic free market programs and tough anti-communist policies. Shortly after she assumed the leadership post, the Conservative Central Party office approached me and asked whether I would draft a speech for the coming campaign in 1975 that was a softer, folksier approach.When Thatcher read the draft, she remonstrated, “Haven’t you ever read ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by Friedrich Hayek?”

“Yes”, I replied. “Well it doesn’t show it,” Thatcher said, ripping up the speech. The fact was that I wrote the draft I was asked to, but the Conservative office had been afraid to risk her wrath by writing such mush.

The only time Palin has ever said “mush” was to Eskimo sled dogs. Like Thatcher, she is tough talking and outspoken. Palin’s actions speak louder than her words.

In 1979, Thatcher’s plain speaking on Conservative plans to cut taxes and regulations on business galvanized the party’s base and she was elected prime minister. Her vision of “a man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns to have the state as servant not master” inspired her country.

Three decades later, Palin has likewise energized her party and has become a rallying point.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

"Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray." Psalm 5It's Sunday! Take a break if you can....rest or recreation ........ and maybe some prayer? ("Please God....NO OBAMA"...okay, I said no politics till Monday, I know) Have a wonderfulday!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Paula had found a childhood picture of Barack Obama which surprised Michelle. 'Where did you GET that?', she asked.

I didn't catch where Paula said she got it, but I did catch this:

Paula said "It says BARRY Obama on it!" Michelle answered "Oh, that's just what his FAMILY called him."

HIS FAMILY? NO.........the books I've read by Obama show clearly that everyone, including school friends, called him BARRY until Occidental College. I found that odd. Why would Michelle jump in with something untruthful?

Remember..the campaign didn't like dwelling on this choice as an adult to use his African name? Michelle's right on message, isn't she!?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

By our friend, a man who's studied this subject inside and out, Morgan

When science and politics mix, science inevitably loses, and sadly morphs into pseudoscience. The man-made global warming scare is a perfect example of politics "polluting" science and causing us to do things that are counter-productive, and think things which are ridiculous and counter-intuitive.

Here's one of the ridiculous assumptions that has become accepted as scientific fact: The idea that the CO2 created by burning fossil fuels is causing global warming. Here are some facts backed up by real science. First, CO2 is a terribly inefficient greenhouse gas due to it's molecular structure. Levels of CO2 would need to be many times higher than they are today to have any noticeable effect on global temperatures. Second, methane and water vapor are very efficient greenhouse gases and trap heat far better than CO2. We have nearly no effect on the levels of methane or water vapor because the oceans generate over 90% of these two gases. Third, based on mud core samples from fjords in Canada, Norway, and Alaska it appears that CO2 is a lagging factor in the global warming cycle. In other words, the Earth warms by a few degrees for a number of possible reasons, the "green belt" moves farther north and so uth, and more gases of all kinds are created, including CO2. Based on some of the best available evidence, increased CO2 levels come after the Earth warms.

When the American Physical Society called for the U.S. to "reduce it's dependence on foreign oil", they really want us to reduce our oil consumption, period! Notice that they didn't call for increased drilling in the continental U.S. or our coastal waters? Increased drilling and exploration for oil and natural gas is the only way we can realistically "reduce our dependence on foreign oil." All other solutions are nothing more than platitudes, half truths, and empty promises at this point. Americans deserve better than the hyperbolic rhetoric handed out by politicians on the left and wind farmers in search of tax handouts. A look at the American Physical Society's website gives you a good indication of the level of the debate where man-made global warming is concerned. Here are a few of the articles they've included on their site; "White Roofs Could Offset Global Warming", and my personal favorite, "Stemming Global Warming With An Artific ial Volcano." You need not be a rocket scientist to understand how intellectually depraved this topic can be.

Those of you over age fifty may remember the April 28, 1975 edition of Newsweek Magazine. It was entitled “The Cooling World.” Global cooling was the big climate scare back then and they claimed it was being caused by our use of fossil fuels. Imagine my surprise! Ironically, significant global cooling truly would be a disaster as it has been in the past. You’d think that anyone with even a modicum of intellectual skepticism (and access to Google) would think really hard before buying into the opposite story in the same lifetime! P.T. Barnum famously said, "A sucker is born every minute." At least when Al Gore's movie is playing we'll know where to find them!

WASHINGTON - A top Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser threw her support behind Republican John McCain on Wednesday, saying he will lead the country in a centrist fashion and accusing the Democrats of becoming too extreme.

"I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party — and they will continue to — too far to the left," Lynn Forester de Rothschild said. "I'm not comfortable there."

"I just ask, who has Barack Obama ever stood up to? And that troubles me a lot," she said. Read more....

WASHINGTON — The Air Force on Tuesday confirmed a report that in 1994 a military researcher requested $7.5 million to develop a non-lethal "love bomb" that would chemically alter the state of mind of enemy troops and make them want to have sex with each other rather than fight.Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Cathy Reardon said the idea was proposed by an Air Force researcher at a lab at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas, but it was rejected by the Defense Department. Officials noted that the Air Force constantly is considering funding proposals.No money was spent, Reardon said, and no such weapons are being considered. The goal was to create a non-lethal weapon to be used against enemy troops.

First reported by KPIX-TV in San Francisco, the discovery of the "gay bomb" proposal came from a Freedom of Information Act request made by Edward Hammond of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, a watchdog group that tracks military spending.

There's more here.... Though why anybody'd WANT much more is beyond me. I can't help wonder how much was spent on this proposal.

No, I have no illustration for this story. No...........I sure don't. no.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

1. Do you think that people who need to have a ballot in their native language get enough information in their language via newspaper, television, radio, etc., to make an educated choice for president of this country?

2. Here's another question: A dear Mexican friend of mine became a citizen about 3 months ago. She told me the authorities at the ceremony asked the new citizens to write their political party down and turn it in. Seemed a strange request to me. Do you know if that's required/legal?

The credit crisis and the lack of oversight over government-subsidized lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac occurred on the watch of George Bush, and many blame his economic team for their lack of oversight in the collapse. Barack Obama has made this point one of his major campaign themes, arguing that John McCain would provide more of the same failures that Bush did. However, what many do not recall is that Bush wanted to tighten oversight with a new regulatory board for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government recipients for the express purpose of addressing bad loan practices — and Democrats blocked it.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

This should have been a no-brainer, right? With hindsight, we can see that the Bush administration had accurately diagnosed the problem in the lending market and had a plan to address it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reluctantly supported the plan. However, Democrats objected (emphases mine):

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Sounds a little like the Democratic denial of problems in Social Security, doesn’t it? Nothing to see here, no crisis on the horizon. Everybody just move along, now. The Democrats had forced lenders to assume more risk at lower interest rates in the 1990s, as IBD points out today, and they didn’t want to countenance an end to their populist policies:But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory.”

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.It was the Bush administration that wanted to rein in the madness in the credit markets, and the Democrats who wanted to extend the Clinton policies that created the crisis we have now. After the fit hit the shan, as Michelle says, these same Democrats want to shift blame back to the administration that wanted to increase oversight and curtail risk in lending practices while reducing patronage at the giant GSEs.

The Bush administration isn’t blameless in letting this get out of hand, but clearly the origins of the disaster and the efforts to keep bad policies in place fall on the Democrats in this case.Update: John Lott points me to a March column he wrote at Fox News explaining the underlying causes of the debacle. Forcing lenders to make questionable loans and blocking tougher regulation of the government-supported entities was a recipe for collapse, and Lott explained it six months before it happened.

"We need to throw every last molecule of s**t we've got at McCain and Palin," said a poster at the Democratic Underground blog."Demonize them. Dehumanize them."

Panic brings out the ugliness in ugly people. And ugliness of this sort is not restricted to moonbat bloggers.

"In the press galleries at the convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin's youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother's hair in place," wrote David Carr in the New York Times Sunday.

How dark must your soul be for you to be "disgusted" by a six-year-old girl who is behaving lovingly toward her baby brother?

As mayor of Wasilla in 1996, did she try to ban from the public library books that weren't published until 1998? The sewer that is the left-wing blogosphere pumps its bilge directly into the "mainstream" media. "

People say yes, she looks good in a bikini clutching an AK-47, but is she equipped to run the country?" asked CNN reporter Lola Ogunnaike, referring, as if it were true, to a crude photoshop on left wing blogs that imposed Ms. Palin's face on someone else's body.

Sarah Palin's approval rating in Alaska last month was 81.6 percent. That means for every person who doesn't like Ms. Palin, there are four who do. But reporters seem only to quote her political enemies, without identifying them as such.Media honchos say they're just doing due diligence."

Intense, independent scrutiny by the Times and the rest of the news media of Palin's background, character and record was inevitable and right," declared Clark Hoyt, the "public editor" of the New York Times.But their hypocrisy is so pronounced the hicks from the sticks have noticed. Among other things, the media moguls expect us to believe:

That inexperience in foreign policy is a fatal defect in the Republican candidate for vice president, but unimportant in the Democrat candidate for president.

That a DUI 22 years ago by the husband of the Republican candidate for vice president is scandalous, but the Democrat candidate for president's admission that he was snorting cocaine at about the same time is too insignificant to mention.

That the pregnancy of the teenage daughter of the Republican candidate for vice president is fair game, but the fact that a Democrat candidate for president (John Edwards) was conducting an extramarital affair while his wife was suffering from incurable cancer should not be reported out of respect for their privacy.

That it is scandalous that Sarah Palin, as mayor of Wasilla, sought earmarks for her town, but unworthy of mention that Barack Obama has steered earmarks to the hospital where his wife works, and to his major contributors.

That the pastors of the churches Sarah Palin attends in Wasilla and Juneau are worthy subjects of investigation, but that the pastor of the racist church Barack Obama attended in Chicago for more than 20 years should be off limits.

That the news media should probe every aspect of Sarah Palin's life, but remain remarkably incurious about Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayres.

The reason for the news media's panic is clear. The Sarah Palin phenomenon has turned this race around. John McCain is now leading or tied in all major polls.But the news media's flagrant bias may cost journalists more than a loss for the candidate they're stacking the deck for.

Last week the gossip magazine Us Weekly, owned by Obama supporter Jann Wenner, featured on its cover an unflattering photo of Ms. Palin (which, I imagine, took some effort to find), and the headline: "Babies, Lies, and Scandals."

The lies were what others were saying about Gov. Palin, Us senior editor admitted to Megyn Kelly (alas, no relation) of Fox News.

So a bottom feeding tabloid has smeared a Republican. What's news about that? The consequences. "Us Weekly...is said to have lost thousands of subscribers in just the first 24 hours following the printing of the issue," reported MSNBC entertainment writer Courtney Hazlett Friday.These are tough times for journalists.

Layoffs are the rule at newspapers throughout the land. Flagrant bias is likely to be bad for business for more than just Us Weekly.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away fromextinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must befought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day wewill spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children whatit was once like in the United States where men werefree." -- Ronald Reagan

remember

Andrew Breitbart...American Hero

Mac 'n GeeeZis my food blog...enjoy! Sorry I haven't added to it in a long while.

President Obama has done such a horrible job with the economy and foreign policy that now Kenyans are accusing him of being born in the United States :-)

important reminders:

We are surrounded by IDIOTS...Mr. Z

“Barack Obama's political genius is his ability to say things that will sound good to people who have not followed the issues in any detail —regardless of how obviously fraudulent what he says may be to those who have. Shameless effrontery can be a huge political asset, especially if uninformed voters outnumber those who are informed.” Thomas Sowell.........AMENTolerance is the last virtue of a dying society. (doesn't matter who wrote it, it's true and it's here)

The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.... Peter Brimelow

The difference between golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie. ~George Deukmejian

Rules of Engagement

I have the greatest readers/commenters on the planet, and I encourage all to engage with us all and enjoy! I ask for respect for them as well as for myself. No gratuitous profanity. Friends can get away with more than people who insult me or my readers, and will, trust me.You will be deleted for whatever I find delete-provoking. It's my house.No Christianity or Judaism bashingEnlighten, complain, or challenge, but keep it succinct. And please don't whine if you don't follow the rules and you're deleted. Thanks!I advise all patrons that they are individually responsible for unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, or harmful material of any kind or nature posted through respective ISPs.

I hereby advise all readers against transmitting via comments, or links to other sites, any material that may constitute criminal behavior, or give rise to civil liability, including (but not limited to) violation of local or state laws, United States Code or regulation, or any international statute to which the United States is a signatory.